Welcome to the first edition of our weekly news, a brief summary of what the Business Support team have been up to in the last week, who they’ve met and some insights into what this week holds.

During the week commencing 4th September we held over 25 meetings. These break down into meetings with local businesses looking for support to help them set up, grow or move premises plus meetings with our partners (accountants, banks, the LEP etc).

We would like to share some of the details of these meetings to give you more of a flavour of what the team are doing and how they are working hard to make sure businesses in York get the right sort of help when they need it most. We are happy to hear back from our readers so please feel free to add your comments at the end of this article.

So, what were the highlights last week? We are always interested to learn about new funding options so we met with Dow Schofield Watts, a Leeds based firm of corporate advisers. They have funding available to help early stage technology businesses. The fund is more relevant to digital, IT and software businesses rather than biotech or medical science. Please contact us in the first instance for more information.

Further progress was made on the second edition of our Stand & Deliver event where local businesses get the chance to pitch to a panel of investors. Tickets will shortly be available for the event on 26th October and we are pleased to be working with St Peter’s School who will be our hosts on the evening.

One of the main strands of our support comes in the way of helping local businesses understand what types of funding are available to them, typically grants and loans. A local manufacturer in the food & drink sector are in the process of expanding into a new product area and were interested to hear what grants were available to help them with the cost of investing in new buildings and equipment. There are several grants at present that cover this type of expenditure so please get in touch for more information. We were also pleased to be asked to present to the board of the Business, Innovation and Growth panel within Leeds City Region LEP. They were keen to hear what business support looks like in reality so we provided them with some case studies to help bring it to life. York was the only area within the city region presenting such examples so it was good exposure for the city.

Elsewhere we delivered another Masterclass at Middletons Hotel to 20 attendees from businesses across the city. The subject matter was all about the first impressions you create personally in business and included tips for making the most of your first chance to impress along with being aware of cultural differences. We are indebted to Will Jenkyns and Jackie Black for delivering this event for us.

Onto this week and our big event is the second annual Food & Drink conference to be held at the Principal Hotel on Thursday. A huge amount of planning has gone into this event and there is a fabulous line of speakers from national and local independents. So, if your business operates in the food & drink sector or you have clients in that sector this is a not to be missed event. Tickets are still available and include lunch. Please book your place here.